"I hope I'm not intruding, Inspector," Martha Peebles said. "Matt Payne's father is an old family friend."

"We were at the Roundhouse, and they told me I'd just missed you; that you were coming here," Pekach said. "We were already on our way here when Sabara called and told me what happened."

"I'm sure Matt will be delighted to see you," Wohl said. "Why don't you go on in? I'd like a quick word with Dave."

He pointed toward Matt's door. Martha walked to it, opened it a crack, peered in, and then pushed the door fully open and went in.

Pekach waited until the automatic closing device had closed the door and then looked at Wohl.

"Well, what do you think?"

"About the security arrangements for Matt or Miss Peebles?"

Pekach flushed again, and then smiled.

"Both," he said.

"Frankly, I can't see what a beautiful woman like that sees in an ugly Polack like you, but they say there's no accounting for taste."

"Thanks a lot."

"And so far as the security arrangements are concerned, it looks to me as if Sergeant Carter has things well in hand," Wohl said.

Why am I uneasy saying that?

"What about when Payne leaves the hospital?"

"We're working on that. Question one, to be answered, is when he will be leaving. We can talk about that in the morning."

Why didn't I just say we're going to have Lewis, McFadden, and Martinez sit on him?

Wohl put his hand on Pekach's arm and led him to Matt Payne's door.

"I'm sorry, we have no patient by that name," the hospital operator said.

"But I know he's there," Helene Stillwell said snappishly. "Ivisited him this morning."

"One moment, please," the operator said.

"Damn!" Helene said.

A male voice came on the line: "May I help you, ma'am?"

Helene hung up.

They're monitoring his calls. Obviously. After that threat to-what did it say?

She dropped her eyes to theLedger, which she had laid on the marble top of the bar in the sun room, and found what she was looking for. It was in a front-page story with the headlineISLAMIC LIBERATION ARMY

"Death to the Zionist oppressors of our people and the murderers who call themselves police!" she read aloud. "My God!"

Under the headline was a photograph of Matt and Jerry Carlucci, with the caption "Officer M. M. Payne, of Special Operations, apparently the target of the ILA threat, shown with Mayor Jerome Carlucci three months ago, shortly after Payne shot to death Germantown resident Warren K. Fletcher, allegedly the 'North Philadelphia serial rapist.'"

Looking at Matt's face, she had a sudden very clear mental image of his gun, and the slick, menacing cartridges for it, which was then replaced by the memory of his naked body next to hers, and of him and the eruption, the explosion, in her, which had followed.

"Christ!" she said softly, and reached for the cognac snifter on the marble.

There was the clunking noise the garage door always made the moment the mechanism was triggered. When she looked out the glass wall at the end of the sun room, she saw Farny's Lincoln coupe waiting for the garage door to open fully.

I didn't see him come up the drive, she thought, and then: I wonder what he's doing home so early.

Helene went behind the bar, intending to give the cognac snifter a quick rinse and to put the bottle away. But then she changed her mind, splashed more Remy Martin in the glass and drank it all down at a gulp. Then she rinsed the glass and put the Remy Martin bottle back on the shelf beneath the bar.

Before Farny came into the house, there was time for her to fish in her purse for a spray bottle of breath sweetener, to use it, replace it, and then move purse and newspaper to the glass-topped coffee table. She had seated herself on the couch and found and lit a cigarette by the time she heard the kitchen door open and then slam.

He always slams that goddamn door!

"I'm in here," she called.

He didn't respond. She heard the sound of his opening the cloak closet under the stairs, the rattling of hangers, and then the clunk of the door closing.

He appeared in the entrance to the sun room.

"Hello," he said.

"Hi," Helene said. "I didn't expect you until later."

"I've got to go way the hell across town to the Detention Center," he said. "I thought it made more sense to get dressed now. I may have to call you and ask you to meet me at the Thompson's. All right?"

She nodded. "I've been thinking about having a drink. Specifically, a straight cognac. Does that sound appealing?"

"Very tempting, but I'd better not. I don't want someone sniffing my breath over there."

"You don't mind if I do? I think I'm fighting a cold."

"Don't fight too hard. You heard what I said about you maybe having to drive yourself to the Thompson's?"

"Why don't I just skip the Thompson's?"

"We've been over this before. Thompson is important in the party."

"You make him, you make the both of you sound like apparatchiks in the Supreme Soviet," Helene said.

"That's the second, maybe the third, time you made that little joke. I don't find it funny this time, either."

"You're certainly in a lousy mood. Has it to do with-what did you say? 'The Detention Center'? What is that, anyway?"

She got up and walked to the bar, retrieved her glass and the bottle of Remy Martin, and poured a half inch into the snifter.

"The Detention Center is where they lock people up before they're indicted, or if they can't make bail. Essentially, it's a prison in everything but name."

"What are you going to be doing there?"

"The one witness we have to the robbery and murder at Goldblatt's is going to try to pick the guilty parties out in lineups. Washingtonthat great big Negro detective?-has scheduled it for half past six. Christ only knows how long it will take."

"I think you're supposed to say 'black,' not 'Negro,'" Helene said.

"Whatever."

"Have you seen the paper?"

"I wasn't in it, my secretary said."

"I meant about the Islamic Liberation Army threatening reprisal, revenge, whatever."

"I heard about it," he said, and then followed her pointing finger and went and picked up theLedger.

She waited until he had read the newspaper story, and then asked, "Do they mean it?"

"Who the hell knows?" he said, and then had a thought. "Going over to see that kid was a good idea. I don't know if I knew or not, but I didn't make the connection. You do know who his father is?"

"Tell me."

"Brewster Cortland Payne, of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester."

"He's important in the party too, I suppose?"

"Helene, you're being a bitch, and I'm really not in the mood for it."

"Sorry."

"But to answer your question, yes. He is important in the party. And if this political thing doesn't work out, Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester is the sort of firm with which I would like to be associated."

"Then maybe we should have gotten him a box of candy or something."

He looked at her and took a moment to consider whether she was being sarcastic again.

"It's not too late, I suppose," Helene said.

He considered that a moment.

"I think that's a lost opportunity," he said.

Damn, it would have given me an excuse to go see him.

"Well, maybe we could have him for drinks or dinner or something," Helen said. "If it's important."

"We'll see," Farnsworth Stillwell said. "I'm going to get dressed."

He had just started up the stairs when the telephone rang. Helene answered it.

"Mr. Farnsworth Stillwell, please," a female voice said. "Mr. Armando Giacomo is calling."